Shoftim: Our Own Torah
Parshat Shoftim is largely concerned with issues of political power and leadership, per its name, “judges.” Among the topics in our parsha is the rules that apply to a king – that is, if the Jewish people decide to appoint one. There are several guidelines that the parsha offers, clearly with the goal of curbing the power of this appointed king:
רַק לֹא־יַרְבֶּה־לּוֹ סוּסִים וְלֹא־יָשִׁיב אֶת־הָעָם מִצְרַיְמָה לְמַעַן הַרְבּוֹת סוּס וַה אָמַר לָכֶם לֹא תֹסִפוּן לָשׁוּב בַּדֶּרֶךְ הַזֶּה עוֹד׃ וְלֹא יַרְבֶּה־לּוֹ נָשִׁים וְלֹא יָסוּר לְבָבוֹ וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב לֹא יַרְבֶּה־לּוֹ מְאֹד׃ וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ עַל כִּסֵּא מַמְלַכְתּוֹ וְכָתַב לוֹ אֶת־מִשְׁנֵה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת עַל־סֵפֶר מִלִּפְנֵי הַכֹּהֲנִים הַלְוִיִּם׃ וְהָיְתָה עִמּוֹ וְקָרָא בוֹ כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיָּיו לְמַעַן יִלְמַד לְיִרְאָה אֶת־ה אֱלֹהָיו לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־כׇּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־הַחֻקִּים הָאֵלֶּה לַעֲשֹׂתָם׃ לְבִלְתִּי רוּם־לְבָבוֹ מֵאֶחָיו וּלְבִלְתִּי סוּר מִן־הַמִּצְוָה יָמִין וּשְׂמֹאול לְמַעַן יַאֲרִיךְ יָמִים עַל־מַמְלַכְתּוֹ הוּא וּבָנָיו בְּקֶרֶב יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since Hashem has warned you, “You must not go back that way again.” And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by/before [“milifne” is a hard word to translate here - ANH] the levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere his God Hashem, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel.
(Shoftim 17:16-20)
Alongside negative prohibitions against hoarding wealth and having “too many wives,” we find a positive, active commandment: for the king to have a “mishneh haTorah,” here translated (by JPS, in accordance with Onkelos) as “a copy of this Teaching” with him when he sits on his throne. Rashi offers an alternative understanding of this phrase:
את משנה התורה. שְׁתֵּי סִפְרֵי תוֹרָה, אַחַת שֶׁהִיא מֻנַּחַת בְּבֵית גְּנָזָיו, וְאַחַת שֶׁנִּכְנֶסֶת וְיוֹצֵאת עִמּוֹ.
"Two sifrei Torah, one which remains in his storehouse, and one that comes and goes with him.”
Rashi teaches us that this phrase, “mishneh,” which shares a root with the word for “two,” means that a king needs to own and make use of two distinct Torah scrolls. A king has the scroll which is kept safe, preserved at home, but a king also must have a sefer Torah that travels with the king throughout the day, which is present for the highs and lows and complexities of their life.
To interpret this creatively, this is a requirement that a leader have a Torah that is integrated with her life. Yes, there is the Torah that is preserved in the storehouse, but there is also the Torah that “comes and goes with her,” that participates in all the dignities and indignities of mundane experiences.
What does it mean to have this kind of Torah? What can it look like to have a Torah that is truly in dialogue with life? Feminist Torah scholars have offered us one path.
Charlotte Fonrobert, writing in dialogue with Tal Ilan in an article entitled “Feminist Interpretations of Rabbinic Literature,” suggests that it is the involvement of those who have previous not been part of the world of Torah – in her example, women – that has the potential to create new kinds of Torah. She writes:
the most powerful claim brought forth by feminist thinking in the Jewish context has perhaps been the claim that these texts belong to women also, that they are part of women's heritage, religious commitments and aesthetic pleasures. This claim already defies women's historical and in some cases institutional exclusion from learning Talmud. This claim and the related emergence of women scholars of Talmud already has begun to change the "face" of the text, as women move from being spectators in the talmudic beit midrash to being participants in it.
Fonrobert is pointing to the reality that each person who learns Torah creates new, different Torah through alchemical reaction between our experiences and selves and relationships and the texts. The Torah affects our lives as we learn it, but we also shape Torah anew as we learn it, as people who each offer new material to the project of Torah itself through our experiences, our dreams, and our realities.
The more people bring themselves to the Torah, the better it is for the Torah. However, this is not the only important aspect of the work of creating Torah through our lives. Generating our own Torah is also how we democratize and decentralize power.
Later in Sefer Devarim, in Parshat Vayelech, we encounter the pasuk that is the source for the mitzvah for each person to write their own Torah:
וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת־הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה־לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְעֵד בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.
(Vayelech 31:19)
In Masechet Sanhedrin, this pasuk is interpreted as the source for the obligation of each person to write their own Torah, and it is explicitly connected to the mitzvah of a king to create their own Torah. Elsewhere in the Talmud, this pasuk is offered as a source for the importance of understanding the Torah deeply and well.
If having one’s own Torah is associated with kingship, but is also an obligation incumbent on each and every person, what is the relationship between political and communal power and making the Torah your own?
It could be argued that the connection is that each Jewish person is a king in and of themselves. But I would prefer to read the universality of the obligation to have a personal relationship with Torah as knocking down the idea and the presence of that kind of power.
If intimate connection to the Torah is both part of royal power and part of the system of check on that power, then each of us building those intimate, personal connections with Torah is part of distributing power rather than concentrating it. When we engage with Torah as the people we are, if we build a Torah through learning it as ourselves, we challenge power structures that rely on Torah to uphold the status quo.
A Jewish world in which each person has their own connection with Torah, in which each Jew is seen as a well of Torah that we will be deprived of if they do not learn Torah without needing to quash any part of themselves, is a world in which we can challenge where power sits. Each person who is kept from learning, or who must pretend to be someone they are not as they encounter the Torah, is a sefer Torah that remains unwritten. I, for one, want to live in a world where we all share power, and can be overwhelmed by the Torah we create.